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10 Oct 2012, 20:36

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Hi all,

I think this is my first post on this forum. SIgned up a few months ago but recently started studying for the test. My apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong section; all the questions and options here relate to posting actual CR questions.

I'm on the 6th book of the Manhattan books: Critical Reasoning. The book emphasizes using what is called a (asymmetrical) T-diagram, where you first try to find the conclusion of the question (if any), write it on top of the T, then right the premises for and against that conclusion on each side of the T, with any assumptions that come to mind in parentheses at the bottom. It emphasizes heavily abbreviating everything. I've been practicing it for a bit now but it still takes me about 90 seconds to do this, so by the time I actually get to the answer choices I'm already a minute and a half behind.

What's more, I don't actually see this strategy helping me. The first and only time I've taken a GMAT prep exam I scored a 36 on the verbal section (79 percentile). Now that I've been doing the practice tests I can say I'm getting 8-9 out of 10 right, whether I use the T-diagram or just by reading the passage without taking any notes of any sort. The only thing I scribble on my paper are the answer choices that I eliminate, and the only strategy I use is when I get stuck between two or more answer choices and fall on the LEN (least extreme negation) method. That's it.

So do people here actually use diagrams and other techniques that require them to write down diagrams and tables and what not?

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10 Oct 2012, 22:43

sepandee wrote:

Hi all,

I think this is my first post on this forum. SIgned up a few months ago but recently started studying for the test. My apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong section; all the questions and options here relate to posting actual CR questions.

I'm on the 6th book of the Manhattan books: Critical Reasoning. The book emphasizes using what is called a (asymmetrical) T-diagram, where you first try to find the conclusion of the question (if any), write it on top of the T, then right the premises for and against that conclusion on each side of the T, with any assumptions that come to mind in parentheses at the bottom. It emphasizes heavily abbreviating everything. I've been practicing it for a bit now but it still takes me about 90 seconds to do this, so by the time I actually get to the answer choices I'm already a minute and a half behind.

What's more, I don't actually see this strategy helping me. The first and only time I've taken a GMAT prep exam I scored a 36 on the verbal section (79 percentile). Now that I've been doing the practice tests I can say I'm getting 8-9 out of 10 right, whether I use the T-diagram or just by reading the passage without taking any notes of any sort. The only thing I scribble on my paper are the answer choices that I eliminate, and the only strategy I use is when I get stuck between two or more answer choices and fall on the LEN (least extreme negation) method. That's it.

So do people here actually use diagrams and other techniques that require them to write down diagrams and tables and what not?

Hey Sepandee,

No you do not actually get time on the real thing to draw diagrams & tables. But ya what helps ?

1. Identify the conclusion2. identify the main premise or evidence that supports the conclusion3. See, if the evidence strongly supports conclusion ? This is where , we can catch the reasoning errors. Either author of the CR paragraph has assumed something or made a flaw in assuming something ! This is called author's line of reasoning , which means what has he assumed in arriving at the conclusion.

Perhaps writing short notes to deconstruct the argument and thereby identifying the conclusion and premises helps ! But once you practice it on 100 questions, say from 101 th question you can easily identify the conclusion and premises just by reading without the need of short notes !

Do grab a copy of Powerscore CR and go through it if you have ample amount of time. The questions at the end of each chapter are also good and of higher order difficulty.

Consider Mgmat CR - 5th edition which is completely rewritten guide from scratch ! I used the guide to go through the very first chapter and then the last chapter on Complete the passage question type !

Let me know if it helps.

Also if you have completed powerscore CR, consider going through this :

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11 Oct 2012, 05:50

igloo wrote:

sepandee wrote:

Hi all,

I think this is my first post on this forum. SIgned up a few months ago but recently started studying for the test. My apologies if I'm posting this in the wrong section; all the questions and options here relate to posting actual CR questions.

I'm on the 6th book of the Manhattan books: Critical Reasoning. The book emphasizes using what is called a (asymmetrical) T-diagram, where you first try to find the conclusion of the question (if any), write it on top of the T, then right the premises for and against that conclusion on each side of the T, with any assumptions that come to mind in parentheses at the bottom. It emphasizes heavily abbreviating everything. I've been practicing it for a bit now but it still takes me about 90 seconds to do this, so by the time I actually get to the answer choices I'm already a minute and a half behind.

What's more, I don't actually see this strategy helping me. The first and only time I've taken a GMAT prep exam I scored a 36 on the verbal section (79 percentile). Now that I've been doing the practice tests I can say I'm getting 8-9 out of 10 right, whether I use the T-diagram or just by reading the passage without taking any notes of any sort. The only thing I scribble on my paper are the answer choices that I eliminate, and the only strategy I use is when I get stuck between two or more answer choices and fall on the LEN (least extreme negation) method. That's it.

So do people here actually use diagrams and other techniques that require them to write down diagrams and tables and what not?

Hey Sepandee,

No you do not actually get time on the real thing to draw diagrams & tables. But ya what helps ?

1. Identify the conclusion2. identify the main premise or evidence that supports the conclusion3. See, if the evidence strongly supports conclusion ? This is where , we can catch the reasoning errors. Either author of the CR paragraph has assumed something or made a flaw in assuming something ! This is called author's line of reasoning , which means what has he assumed in arriving at the conclusion.

Perhaps writing short notes to deconstruct the argument and thereby identifying the conclusion and premises helps ! But once you practice it on 100 questions, say from 101 th question you can easily identify the conclusion and premises just by reading without the need of short notes !

Do grab a copy of Powerscore CR and go through it if you have ample amount of time. The questions at the end of each chapter are also good and of higher order difficulty.

Consider Mgmat CR - 5th edition which is completely rewritten guide from scratch ! I used the guide to go through the very first chapter and then the last chapter on Complete the passage question type !

Let me know if it helps.

Also if you have completed powerscore CR, consider going through this :

If you do not have time for books, the best approach would be go through all of the "Thursdays with Ron" videos for CR.

Hmm, what do you mean by ample time? My exam is in 12 days, but I have 6 full hours every single day that I can spend on studying.

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11 Oct 2012, 10:49

igloo wrote:

Hi Sepandi,

well in that case, go for all Thusrdays with Ron videos for CR. It should help you in CR accuracy.

Thanks, I'll look into it. I'm just wondering whether it's necessary beneficial at this point. I finished the Manhattan CR book, and without exception I got 9 out of 10 on all the practice questions at the end of their chapters. Mind you, these are Manhattan's own questions, so now I'm going to do the ones that they singled out from The Official Guide and the Verbal Guide and see how I do on those. Also, I don't even know if 9/10 is good or not, but I'll guess I'll find out soon. On Monday I'll be take my second gmat prep exam; I scored 570 the first time, which was before I had studied any of this (I mean, I didn't even remember the Pythagorean theorem when I took the test, or have a clue about number properties). Hopefully I can score at least a 670-680 this time around, and then I have 9 days, day and night, to practice and bring it to 700+.